Tuesday, January 1, 2013

New Year, New Project

Happy New Year! I hope everyone enjoyed themselves way too much and got to spend today relaxing. This is a resolution free space, but I do want to share something new that I'll be doing this year. Artist Patrick Artazu and I are collaborating on a series of graphic short stories. It's strange, challenging and fun for a writer like me who can't draw a straight line to try to marry words and images. Collaboration carries the added bonus of making writing a little less solitary.

Watch this space in the upcoming weeks for our first graphic story, "Wet Spot." At left is a little teaser panel from the story featuring Anya, an au pair whose seduction by her employer has bizarre and unexpected consequences.Tangentially related, I recently bought my first comic book as an adult. When I was very young, I loved listening to stories of Wonder Woman on my Fisher Price tape recorder. As a kid, I was very into "Betty & Veronica" (Team Veronica!), but my comic/graphic novel reading experience as an adult has been more "literary." Yes, this is a slippery descriptor that can evoke endless debate, but no one can argue that "Persepolis" is a very different beast than the works of DC and Marvel.

In an effort to learn all things comic, I've been listening to the 3 Chicks podcasts. Their motto is "comics should be good," and they raved about "Ghost." I was sold. But when I read volume one, I was surprised by the huge gap in the quality of the art and the quality of the writing. I won't be buying any more of the "Ghost" series, since clunky, smug narrative voices make me want to tear my hair out. But the art is so purty. Anyone have a recommendation for a comic that has art as good as Phil Noto's, with writing to match?